Miracle (26 page)

It was a rare night that one could count the stars in the sky, but they were there, twinkling against the black, scattered like diamonds around the sickle-shaped yellow moon, which floated above the reflective sea. Clayton focused on his reflection in the windowpane and wished like hell that he was already there, in Niton, with its ruddy- faced farmers and seamen who smelled like fish.

"Sir," Benjamin said near his ear. "Our bags are packed. Ready to go."

"Then unpack them."

"Oh, but, sir . . . my lord, '
twould
be folly to remain here, and besides, I saw them again, sir. We simply cannot remain here any longer. It isn't safe."

"Saw what, Benjamin?"

"The beast. And the dark specter babbling in tongues."

Imbibing the last of the brandy from the bottom of the flask, Clayton turned to stand face to face with his ashen cheeked companion. Benjamin's eyes were round as saucers, his breath rich enough to ignite peat.

"You think me mad," Benjamin muttered.

"Not at all," Clayton replied.

Ben's eyebrows shot up. He swayed a little from side to side, then hiccoughed.

"I saw them myself," Clayton confessed.

Benjamin swallowed.

"And the angel and the unicorn, too."

"You . . . don't say."

Clayton clamped one hand on the man's shoulder, squeezed him comfortingly. "I think we're both a little mad, my friend. Rephrase. I am a great deal mad or I wouldn't still be here. Don't get me wrong, Ben; I want like hell to leave this musty, damp old place with its cobwebs and ghosts and goddamn unicorns and dragons. But I promised my brother . . ."

He laughed shortly, cynically, then shoved the servant away. "Who the bloody blazes am I kidding? I'm not here any longer for Trey. I'm here for me. Because she mesmerizes me, Ben. She fascinates me. I want to learn if she's for real. It's not demons or faceless marauders who terrify me. It's her. What she is. What she may or may not be."

"She's to
become
your brother's wife," Benjamin declared.

"Yes," he said softly. "My brother's wife. My brother who has been given everything: a respected title, a dozen estates, a fortune once my
grandmother
dies . . . not to mention my parents' undivided attention. After all, Trey was the firstborn, the heir apparent—"

"My lord," Ben interrupted, catching Clayton's shoulders in his hands. "Your parents loved you."

"But not like they loved Trey. Can you comprehend what it was like for me? I was nothing more than Trey's shadow, Ben. A mirror image that stood aside from the reality while the reality was lavished with attention. Trey; he makes a bloody mess of his life and what does he care? There will always be someone there to set him straight, to get his life in order. Namely me."

Taking Clayton's face firmly in his hands, Benjamin regarded him intensely. "And here you are, Clay, helping him again—hoping to win the lass over so the union might reward His Grace with the respect and comfort only your grandmother's money can buy him. Let's leave this place before this perverse interest you have in the girl grows beyond your means to control it, unless, of course, you wish to marry her yourself."

Clayton laughed, a harsh and abrupt sound, and turned away from his friend. He shook the empty flask, then tossed it away, paced the room, his eyes taking in the barren chamber as he said cholerically, "Don't be ridiculous. I have no desire whatsoever to marry Miracle Cavendish. The idea is absurd."

"Then why are we here, my lord? Or more to the point, why do we
remain
here?"

"I don't know," Clayton said wearily. "Perhaps I'm simply fascinated by unicorns."

My horse with a mane made of short rainbows,

My horse with eyes made of big stars.

My horse with a head made of mixed waters.

My horse with teeth made of white shell.

The long rainbow is in his mouth for a bridle

and with it I guide him.

When my horse neighs,

different-colored horses follow.

When my horse neighs,

different-colored sheep follow.

I am wealthy because of him

Before me peaceful

Behind me peaceful

Over me peaceful—

Peaceful voice when he neighs.

I am everlasting and peaceful

I stand for my horse.

from Louis Watchman's version of

the Navajo "Horse Story"

Chapter
Ten

The moon and starlight were bright enough to spill through the embrasures and dimly light the vast corridors that stretched out like a maze before Clayton.

Basingstoke. Basingstoke. Basingstoke. He repeated the name in his head as he moved as silently as possible across the stone floor, occasionally reaching out with one hand to finger the wall, hoping the contact of cold stone would steady him in his intrusive exploration of his host's home.

Basingstoke. Hawthorne. Clayton. Not the duke of Salterdon. That was his brother. He was becoming too caught up in this despicable role he'd been playing, forgetting that he had come here to win Miracle Cavendish for his brother.

Once, while in Paris, lying in his mistress's arms, he had mentally compared the ruse to the spinning of a spider's web. The silken, transparent labyrinth of his lies would lure Miracle in, and once captured, he would wrap her up with his charm and deliver her to his brother. He had looked at it as a game, like the games of switched identity he and Trey had played on their friends and family during their childhood. But, until arriving on the isle, Miracle Cavendish had only been a faceless entity whom his brother had tossed off as some backward country bumpkin who was, apparently, slightly light in intelligence—or so his brother had insinuated.

Another lie.

Now, however, he was beginning to feel as if he were the one caught in the web. The harder he struggled to remove himself emotionally, the more fiercely he felt bagged. This immense and abnormal preoccupation with the girl was beginning to bother him. Yet, here he was, stealing through the corridors of her home in hopes of unraveling her mysteries. Perhaps then he could put this "perverse interest," as Ben had called it, to rest. Perhaps then he could leave this place and return home, leave the girl and his guilt to molder away in this dark passage of cells.

Coming to John's room, he slid inside. The dying peat in the fireplace lent a reddish gold gloom to the interior. The empty port glass from which he had earlier imbibed still sat on the table near a chair. Hoyt's lap blanket lay on the floor in an untidy heap. His bed was empty.

This was ridiculous, creeping about the old man's chamber in the middle of the night like some common thief. He wasn't even certain why he had come here, to this room. There was very little here of Miracle, aside from the books that she had supposedly read. But there was something nagging at him—bothering him about the situation with Miracle and Hoyt and her mother's disappearance.

A sudden draft through the door scattered papers from a stack on a desk. One landed near his foot. Clayton retrieved the page, tilted it toward the light from the hearth, and allowed his eyes to peruse it: the script was written by an obviously unsteady hand.

At last, his gaze went to the hearth ash, watched the yellow heat pulsate and wink like little glowing eyes as he continued to hold the paper and its writings in his fingertips that were growing numb with cold. "Christ," he said after a long moment.

Another wind, colder this time, bringing him back to his senses. Carefully folding the paper, he then slid it into his trouser pocket and wished like hell that he had put on his cloak, his cutaway at the very least, but he hadn't wanted to wake Benjamin. The poor sod was having enough trouble dealing with the fact that he was going to be forced to remain at Cavisbrooke a while longer—or at least until Clayton "came to his senses."

A noise. Clayton moved to the door, paused, looked first one way up the corridor, then the other. Nothing, then a figure materialized from the shadows and stopped in the distance, too far to make out who or what it was. His mind raced with a dozen excuses he would make for nosing around Hoyt's private chamber, should he be discovered. But then the apparition moved, not toward him, but away, dissolving back into the obscurity of the black gallery.

Clayton followed, keeping to the wall, farther and farther, until the walls grew older, mustier, and damper, until no light shone at all through the embrasures and no candles cast meager light to help his passage. Perhaps he had just imagined the phantom, he must surely have done that morning on the beach. There were no angels and unicorns. No babbling specters riding dragons and brandishing swords.

He moved ahead. There came a scraping, grinding groan, and, for an instant, a sliver of light appeared, then disappeared in the distance. A door opening and closing?

At last, he came face to face with a wall. He heard voices, muffled, sounding like Hoyt barking orders
and .. .
the drumming, thundering,
like . . .
a horse running.

Clayton slid his hand over the stone wall and brushed against the cold steel of a heavy latch. He closed his fingers around it and shoved. The wall gave and easily slid open.

The bright flash of firelight and color assaulted his eyes, and he winced, squinted, and focused on the activity before him.
Our unicorns and dragons, Benjamin, my friend,
he thought. And, of course, the angel.